


The Sun Dies Every Night

by firbolg_boyfriends



Series: A Study in Useless Lesbianism [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Human, Coming of Age, F/F, Meaningful Eye Contact, Road Trips, Underage Smoking, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Yearning, can EASILY be read as a standalone, takes place in washington state, transmasc genderfluid Molly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:40:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22035712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firbolg_boyfriends/pseuds/firbolg_boyfriends
Summary: “People like us,” Beau heard herself say, and Yasha turned to her, their eyes catching once again. But Beau felt like she couldn’t look away this time – this moment they were in felt magical, as if anything that happened here was either not real or realer than anything else that had ever happened. Beau could be brave here. She could be brave because she wasn’t even the same Beau – someone else had driven here, and someone else would drive back, but right now, this was a different person, a braver person, a person who looked into beautiful girls’ eyes without trepidation.“I’m glad I met you,” Yasha said, voice so soft it could’ve just been the wind.Beau’s heart pounded. “Me too,” she said, almost as softly. “Glad you met me, I mean. I’m pretty great.”Yasha chuckled, and fireworks exploded in Beau’s ribcage. That was twice today she’d made her laugh.***Three teens drive across the state and back, and that's it, really.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Mollymauk Tealeaf, Beauregard Lionett & Yasha, Beauregard Lionett/Yasha
Series: A Study in Useless Lesbianism [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1586083
Comments: 15
Kudos: 81





	The Sun Dies Every Night

**Author's Note:**

> This is a flashback of an event that was very briefly referenced in the first chapter of another fic, but you do not have to read either of them to understand the other! I just included them in a series because they take place in the same universe. That's why the rest of the M9 aren't here - Beau and Molly don't meet them until college in this AU :)

It was technically against the rules to have your phone out at any time, ever, at Cobalt High, but that was the type of rule that was only ever enforced by particularly vindictive paraeducators patrolling the corridors during passing time. During fifth period Honors AB Calculus, the students had a sort of unspoken agreement with the teacher. After they finished their daily assignments they could open their phones to text their friends about how boring Honors AB Calculus was. Or if they were Beau, they could do that exact thing after merely pretending to finish their daily assignments. (The trick, she’d discovered, was to have her notebook on her desk and open to an assignment from a different day, so it would look like she’d just done a lot of work but no one ever looked closely enough to realize it wasn’t the work she was supposed to be doing.)

And it was a good thing this unspoken rule existed, because otherwise Beau wouldn’t have received her best friend’s urgent text right on time. ‘I think we should leave school early so we can beat the afterschool traffic,’ pinged her phone.

Oh, right. Today was the day that Beau had agreed to drive Molly across the state to pick up an Ouija board he’d ordered on eBay. The purpose of owning it was, theoretically, to "cast a curse" on his English teacher out of revenge for (allegedly) slighting his textual interpretation abilities, but as time passed and the sting of the insult faded, the quest had become more about the novelty of owning an ostensibly authentic Ouija board. According to Molly, the seller was a genuine psychic and the Ouija board was an antique originally made in Europe. Beau was skeptical about the truth of those claims, but Molly had agreed to buy her fast food during lunch for the rest of the year as long as she snuck him off campus after fourth period every day and drove him to the nearest strip mall, so she was willing to accept the deal.

Now Molly evidently wanted her to sign herself out of school an hour and a half early. She’d checked and double checked that her parents wouldn’t be notified, but she was still paranoid that they’d find out somehow. She’d already asked them for a midnight curfew tonight because she wasn’t sure how long Molly’s escapade would take, and that was really pushing it. She was running low on political capital with them. Parental capital, if you will.

‘Ur sure my parents wont find out?’ she texted back.

‘I promise,’ he texted back. Then, ‘I read the school rulebook one time when i was really bored.’

She chuckled to herself lightly. That sounded like Molly.

Even though she was eighteen now, leaving school early still felt like an illicit affair. Illicit in the way where it made Beau feel kind of badass – just a little bit. She held her head high as she strolled down the deserted hallways and down the echoey stairways even though no one was around to see her except the mean old ladies in the administration office.

When the building spit her out into the sunny parking lot, she peered around in search of her beat-up ’95 Subaru (yeah, yeah, lesbian stereotypes, laugh it up) and noticed Molly and another person leaning against the back passenger window, smoking cigarettes – a bold move when there was almost certainly a grumpy security guard lurking around campus somewhere. Walking closer and adjusting her backpack strap over one shoulder, she saw that Molly’s companion was Yasha, the Russian exchange student who’d been living in Molly’s house this year. Fiery hot pins and needles shot through Beau’s body like split-second acupuncture.

Beau tripped slightly over a crack in the asphalt. She was going to be normal about this. She was not going to be gay about this. Scratch that – she was going to be gay, and she was going to be normal! Somehow.

Molly waved his cigarette in the air when he noticed her, and Yasha dodged the falling bits of ash. “Hey! You ready to go?” he called out, even though she was close enough to hear him if he spoke at a normal volume.

She glared at him. “Keep your voice down! Do you want to get in trouble?” she growled.

He spread his hands, flashing her an ‘are you stupid?’ look. “Uh, we can’t get in trouble, Beau, we’re eighteen. We can do whatever we want now! It’s the law!”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Beau grumbled, but it was hard to feel truly anxious when the sky was so crystalline blue and sparrows were chirping in the alder trees. It felt like summer, but a secret summer. A summer only the three of them had access to, here in this parking lot filled with cars flashing in the sunlight but devoid of other people and their noise.

Yasha made eye contact with Beau as she exhaled a puff of smoke, and Beau glanced away, concentrating on dandelions she saw growing at the edge of the curb. Yasha had some sort of heterochromia where her eyes were two different shades of blue, and the colors were further accentuated by thick coal-black eyeliner she drew around them. She resembled some kind of sexy witch, and Beau hadn’t realized that was her type, but God. She was afraid if she looked too long she’d end up staring and then everything that was in her mind would be out in the open, unfolded and vulnerable for everyone to see. She couldn’t risk it.

“Oh yeah, is it cool if Yash comes with us?” she heard Molly’s voice say. “I just didn’t wanna leave her home alone, you know. And she can show us her cool Russian music in the car! She listens to all these punk bands, I bet you’d love it.”

“Yeah. I probably would.” Beau blinked up at Molly, squinting in the afternoon light. And the brilliance shining from his calf-length metallic-silver skirt. Ever since he’d gotten top surgery over winter break he’d felt much more comfortable wearing feminine clothes again, but exclusively over-the-top ostentatious numbers he found on the costume racks of vintage stores.

“We should get going,” Beau said. “We don’t wanna –”

“Shotgun!” Molly yelled, interrupting her as he hurriedly grabbed the passenger door handle. It clicked uselessly, because Beau hadn’t unlocked the car yet. He pouted at her as she smirked, pulling her keys out of her sweatpants pocket and waving them tauntingly in the air.

Yasha caught her eye and smiled in that subtle, private, unbearably attractive way she did, and Beau allowed herself a moment to gloat and flush before she broke Yasha’s gaze, clearing her throat. She strode around to the driver’s side to manually unlock it. “All right, dumbasses, get in. And leave the cigs out, I don’t want you guys stinkin’ up my car.”

Molly made a whining noise but obliged, stubbing the cigarette out on the pavement below his rhinestone-studded boot. Beau didn’t feel bad for him at all. She was chauffeuring him on an eight-hour round trip, after all.

&

Washington’s mountain highways were lined with elegant, deep green, towering conifers and sweeping emerald-and-gold hillsides and meandering ice-white waterfalls and distant snowy peaks shrouded in gray-blue mist. A drive through the Northern Cascades was truly an unforgettable stretch of time, especially in late-spring when clear sky and pure sunlight illuminated the wilderness in vibrant sparkle.

Beau couldn’t appreciate any of it, though, because Molly had taken over the aux cord and they were now starting their third listen-through of Fearless Platinum Edition, the seminal country pop album by Taylor Swift (seminal according to Molly). Round one had been for ‘enjoyment’ (and Beau had to begrudgingly admit she’d enjoyed it, no matter how much she half-jokingly complained at the time), round two had been for analysis, and now round three was for commentary.

“I just think ‘Untouchable’ is such an underrated, yearning love song, like the imagery, the pining, the emotion underlying every lyric –” Molly paused to stuff another handful of potato chips in his mouth. Beau contemplated banging her forehead on the steering wheel.

“Can I play a song?” Yasha quietly interjected from the backseat, and Beau narrowly stopped herself from whipping her head back against the headrest in surprise. Yasha hadn’t talked much at all during the whole car ride so far; Beau had genuinely assumed she was asleep. She’d been partly bummed about not getting a chance to converse with a pretty girl, but also partly profoundly relieved at not having to converse with a pretty girl.

“Oh – really?” Molly sounded torn between wanting to be nice to his friend and wanting to continue waxing pedantic about T-Swift’s early hits.

“Come on, give her the aux, Mollymauk Tealeaf.” Beau reached out a free hand to shove his shoulder, and he squawked indignantly.

Yasha briefly met Beau’s eyes in the rearview mirror, dark eyelashes flicking up. It was a testament to Beau’s driving abilities that she prevented herself from accidentally swerving into the opposite lane.

“This is a song from Russia. It is kind of a… punk song, I suppose you would say. It’s called… ‘They Will Not Catch Us?’”

Molly pulled out his phone, seeming to search something up. “Oh, it’s called ‘Not Gonna Get Us’ in English.”

“Yes, that.”

Yasha started playing a fast-paced song that sounded strongly ‘90s. Beau tried to concentrate on the beat and not on Yasha’s soft voice – it was so beautiful. Beau could just listen to her talk for hours. If Yasha had a podcast, Beau would download every episode. Then she mentally admonished herself because she’d promised herself she was going to be normal on this road trip.

“It’s about, ah, escaping from the, the government. The bad guys, who are persecuting you. And it is the story of – of two women.”

Molly wrapped himself around his seat to face Yasha, unintentionally leaning into Beau’s space and causing her to swat irritably at him. “Really? Two women? Are they, ya know… in loooooooove?”

The car was silent for a moment, save for the hum of the engine and the quiet roar of air rushing past as Beau drove along the winding highway. “Yes,” Yasha replied, barely audible. “Two women. They are in love.”

“Oh,” Molly said, and there was something gentle and fond in his voice that made Beau fix her eyes on the windshield because she felt secondhand vulnerability just from listening to him. “Are you – do you – identify with that?” he continued awkwardly.

Beau couldn’t see Yasha, but she must have nodded, because Molly stretched towards the backseat to touch her, cooing, “Oh, I love you so much, Yash. We’re all gay in this car, you know that?”

Beau’s heart pounded in her throat. Even though Molly had just implied it, she desperately needed to let Yasha know that she was also queer, in order for… something. To be honest, she wasn’t sure what she expected to happen – it wasn’t like Yasha was going to instantly proclaim her undying love for her and leap into her lap because they both happened to be gay ladies. And it wasn’t like – being gay was just a fact about you, right? It shouldn’t mean anything. That was what everyone said. You didn’t have to be friends with someone just because they were gay, and if you were already friends with them, the revelation of gayness shouldn’t change anything.

But she felt like she couldn’t stop herself from saying it. It was coming up like word vomit. It was as if she’d been walking around in a bubble her whole life, and when she met other people who also had bubbles around them, she was overcome with the urge to combine their bubbles with hers, because at least they could be isolated together instead of isolated alone.

“I’m gay too!” Beau blurted, still staring intently at the yellow line on the road ahead. “I mean – yeah. So just like. Yeah,” she finished awkwardly, mentally beating herself over the head with a stick.

Molly flashed her a look like ‘Okay, weirdo’ and turned back to face Yasha. “Yeah, Beau is gay. And I am too. Well, I’m bi, technically. But also – I dunno? It’s weird when you’re nonbinary because all the sexual orientations are, like, based on gender. But whatever, let’s not get into that. What I’m trying to say, and what Beau is trying to say, in her own cumbersome and illiterate manner –”

“Fuck you, you’re the illiterate one,” Beau mumbled, and Molly smacked her lightly on the bicep.

“As I was saying,” Molly continued at a slightly louder volume, “we’re just trying to tell you that we support you, and we won’t judge you, and that you’re safe here. With us. Okay? I mean, I know it’s hard to believe because Beau is so rude and smells so bad –”

“Hey, I do not smell bad!” Beau yelled. (She didn’t bother disputing the ‘rude’ part.)

“Thank you, guys,” Yasha said. Her voice sounded a little scratchy, and based on Molly’s continued cooing, Beau gathered that she was tearing up a little. Beau swallowed, feeling awkward. If Yasha was her girlfriend, she’d kiss her and hold her close. But they weren’t girlfriends, and Beau was sitting in the front seat of her shitty car while Yasha was in the back, and they were still basically kids no matter how much Molly talked about how everyone was an adult as soon as they hit their eighteenth birthday, and pretty soon they’d all graduate and Yasha would go back to Russia and Molly and Beau would go to state school and maybe they’d never see each other again, or maybe they would but so much time would have passed that they’d be different people. You never step in the same river twice, like they say.

Beau had only ever seen romance movies about straight people so she had no idea if the script was the same for love stories about two girls. And what about love stories where one girl maybe (probably) didn’t love the other girl, who inexpertly cut her own hair and wore a faux nose piercing as a stand-in for the real one she wanted to get as soon as she moved to the big city, and she had a driver’s license and a mediocre fake ID but she’d barely avoided failing out of her sophomore math class and she still didn’t look people in the eye when she said ‘thank you’ and she pretended to be a badass every day even though she still hadn’t had her first kiss and was secretly afraid she’d be bad at it when it finally happened? What was the script for that?

Yasha sniffled slightly. “Can we play the song again?” she asked. “I don’t think we were listening the first time through.”

&

When they arrived in Spokane they realized that they hadn’t made any plans for how they were going to get dinner, so Molly looked up the nearest McDonald’s on his phone and they parked in a shady spot beneath a maple tree. They went inside to order their food, but decided to eat in the car because some of the old people sitting at the tables had been staring at them unpleasantly. They certainly were a sight to see – three gangly teenagers, Yasha with her incompletely bleached hair and Molly with his shoulder-padded ‘80s blazer (that probably hadn’t been stylish when it was made) and Beau with her half shave and railroad spike earrings from Hot Topic.

Because of the way the car was parked and the angle of the late-afternoon sun, dusty beams of light slanted through the side windows, bathing Beau (and half of Yasha) in a cream-yellow glow and shrouding Molly (and the other half of Yasha) in shadow. One of Yasha’s eyes shone like stained glass in the way sunlit irises did, a crystalline summer-sky blue next to the shaded stormy hue on the other side. Beau needed to stop staring at Yasha’s eyes. She concentrated on the gray seat upholstery instead; it was cheap faux leather that would heat up to scalding levels if they let it sit in the sun for too long. Which reminded her:

“How long are we gonna stay parked here? Like can we walk to the seller’s place? Or do I have to find parking in some other fuckin’ place?”

“I think we can walk there. Lemme just – find the directions…” Molly’s brow furrowed as he scrolled through his phone, and Beau took advantage of the distraction to steal a handful of his fries. She offered some to Yasha, who politely took a single fry.

As it turned out, the seller’s house was much farther away than Molly had thought, in a somewhat seedy neighborhood. The sun sank lower in the sky as the three of them traipsed along old cement sidewalks with weeds growing from the cracks, past dilapidated housing developments and sheets of plywood and rusty corrugated metal embellished with faded graffiti.

“You sure we’re goin’ the right direction?” Beau piped up as they passed a deserted schoolyard. Yasha had taken the plastic crocodile clip out of her hair and was running it along the chain-link fence as she walked, creating a metallic ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch (it was probably the loudest she’d been all day, and she wasn’t even speaking). Beau kicked one of the pebbles that littered the ground, sending it rattling across the empty asphalt street.

“Yeah…I’m pretty sure…” Molly replied, sounding like he wasn’t very sure. He squinted up at the hazy blue sky as if it would give him some direction. This far out east past the mountains, the land was dry and hot, especially as summer made its way around the bend. Beau took off her hoodie and tied it around her waist. “Wait a second…” Molly said, spinning around slowly, as if he was calibrating. Then he raised his hand and pointed across the street with a bejeweled acrylic nail. “The building is over there!”

The seller, it turned out, was an incredibly old woman wrapped in about seven shawls who lived in a dark, cluttered antique depot of an apartment. Molly got his Ouija board. And she even threw in the planchette for only five dollars extra.

“Do you even know how to use that?” Beau asked as they stumped back towards the McDonald’s parking lot. The neighborhood was quiet except for the buzzing of insects and the occasional roar of a passing car. The white parts of Yasha’s hair were lit up gold in the dying daylight. Beau flicked her eyes back to Molly, who was turning the carved wooden board over in his hands, examining it.

“I think so? I mean, it can’t be that hard, right? They do it all the time in horror movies.”

“I mean, in the horror movies they always end up accidentally summoning a demon…”

“That wouldn’t be so bad, like, what if it’s a hot demon?”

“All demons are hot. They live in Hell, dumbass,” Beau said, nudging him in the ribs. Yasha giggled from a few feet ahead of them, and Beau felt her whole body grow warm. She hadn’t realized Yasha was even listening. And she made her laugh, somehow? Score. Maybe Beau wasn’t totally hopeless with girls after all.

Molly flashed her an oddly knowing glance, likely in response to whatever kind of dopey grin was currently on her face. She raised an eyebrow at him like ‘What’? He just pursed his lips and shook his head fondly. “I love ya, dork,” he told her.

She broke eye contact, looking down at her black-and-white-checkered vans (almost black-and-gray now, since she’d had them for years). “I love you too,” she muttered. “Both you guys.”

&

The sun set on the drive home, etching the tall evergreen trees into dark silhouettes and bathing the interior of the car in burnished red. The radio quietly played a mediocre remix of some two-year-old pop song. Beau flicked on the headlights.

“I don’t wanna go back to school tomorrow,” Molly murmured. She could barely hear him over the rumble of the highway. He leaned his head against the edge of the window, fading purple hair dye blending into the dusky atmosphere.

“Me neither,” Beau replied faintly.

No one said anything for a moment. Even though they’d gone to school five days a week, nine months a year, for as long as any of them could remember, something felt utterly unconscionable about returning to it yet again. But Beau knew they would, and then they would do it again the next day, and the next day after that. There were myths in some cultures about how the sun died every night and resurrected every morning. Beau felt like those stories were about her sometimes.

But there was something bigger about it, too. Beau didn’t want life to keep moving. She didn’t want to get older, and graduate, and she didn’t want tomorrow to start. She didn’t even want to ever get home. She just wanted to stay in this moment forever, driving on a highway at sunset with her best friend and a girl she kind of liked. Eternal limbo didn’t sound so terrible.

The sky got darker until eventually the only brightness came from the lights of the other cars, red going forward and white going back. Molly was uncharacteristically quiet; he must’ve fallen asleep. Yasha leaned forward, gently tapping on Beau’s shoulder. “Can we get off at the next exit?” she whispered. “I need to use the washroom.”

Beau pulled over on the side of a road that led through the woods to some podunk town. There was nothing here but a coffee stand (currently closed) and a gas station that looked like a great place to get murdered. Beau got out of the car and stood in the tall grass, hands in her pockets, while Yasha went inside.

She came out a few minutes later. Beau just stood there in the quiet night. Cars rushed by on the highway, and the wind softly lifted her hair. It was dark enough that Beau couldn’t fully make out Yasha’s face. Yasha leaned against the hood of the Subaru, and wordlessly, Beau joined her.

Yasha lit a cigarette, the ember glowing in the darkness like a tiny blinking star. She offered it to Beau and Beau accepted, holding it between her index and middle finger like she’d seen cool girls do in the movies and inhaling the acrid smoke even as it burned her throat. From somewhere among the trees, an unseen bird let out a mournful call. A crescent moon hung overhead, distant and thin as a knife’s blade.

Beau tried to think of something to say. She was afraid to mention anything about the future or the town they were returning to or anything outside the little world of this forgotten highway exit, because none of it felt real right now and somehow talking about it would make it real again.

“So… you’re going back to Russia soon,” Beau’s mouth said, betraying her heart. Dammit.

Yasha nodded almost imperceptibly, exhaling another puff of smoke and handing the cigarette back to Beau.

“How do you… feel about that?” Beau asked awkwardly.

Yasha shrugged and blew a loose hair out of her face. “I don’t know. I’m not looking forward to it. Life there is not always to kind to… people like me.”

“People like us,” Beau heard herself say, and Yasha turned to her, their eyes catching once again. But Beau felt like she couldn’t look away this time – this moment they were in felt magical, as if anything that happened here was either not real or realer than anything else that had ever happened. Beau could be brave here. She could be brave because she wasn’t even the same Beau – someone else had driven here, and someone else would drive back, but right now, this was a different person, a braver person, a person who looked into beautiful girls’ eyes without trepidation.

“I’m glad I met you,” Yasha said, voice so soft it could’ve just been the wind.

Beau’s heart pounded. “Me too,” she said, almost as softly. “Glad you met me, I mean. I’m pretty great.”

Yasha chuckled, and fireworks exploded in Beau’s ribcage. That was twice today she’d made her laugh.

Somehow, they were slightly closer together than they’d been before. Beau almost felt Yasha’s hip brushing her own.

The air between them felt taut, like a string about to be cut. And it was warmer than the chilly night around them too – or it seemed that way to Beau, at least.

Now would be the moment to kiss her, Beau thought to herself. Just do it, just move. What could go wrong, asked her heart. So many things, answered her head.

The moment lasted a hundred years, but eventually it ended. A police car drove by the highway, the sirens wailing distantly in the cool air and the rotating lights washing Yasha’s face in red and blue and violet. They heard Molly yawning in the car.

Beau didn’t kiss Yasha. They got back in the car. Beau started the engine again.

&

It was nearing eleven pm by the time they reached the city limits of their hometown. Beau drove to drop Molly and Yasha off, curving through night-darkened suburbs towards their familiar tree-lined driveway.

She pulled up against the curb and Molly fished his keys out of his blazer pocket, blinking the sleep away from his eyes. Yasha unbuckled her seatbelt and slid towards the door.

“Thanks for driving us, Beau-re-gaaaaard,” Molly sing-songed. “See you in APUSH tomorrow. Bright n’ early.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Beau grumbled. “Hey, pay me back for gas, okay?”

He opened the door and clambered out, Ouija board tucked under one arm. “I will, I promise!”

Beau sat in the passenger seat and watched her best friend and his ridiculous outfit and his Russian exchange student cross the lawn diagonally, shoes making a hush-hush sound in the dew-damp grass. As they reached the front door and Molly got to work unlocking it, Yasha turned and looked back at Beau. Even from this distance, Beau could almost see the blue in her eyes.

Something almost like a smile played on Yasha’s lips, just for a split second. And then Molly opened the door and she was gone and so was the moment, ephemeral as dandelion seeds.

Beau leaned her head back, staring at the blank, ink-washed sky through the skylight above. She let out a heavy sigh.

She wasn’t sure how much time passed as she sat alone in the dark, listening to the muffled crackling of an old car engine cooling down – maybe ten minutes, maybe ten seconds.

Eventually, she jolted the keys in the ignition and made her way back to a home she didn’t miss. And she would fall asleep at some point after wolfing down reheated leftovers and half-heartedly scrolling through social media and then she’d wake up hours later and go to school yet another time, impossible as it was. The sun died every night and resurrected every morning, and no one ever stepped in the same river twice.

**Author's Note:**

> Beau's car is inspired by the maroon '95 Subaru Legacy I drove in high school (may its soul rest in eternal peace). 'Not Gonna Get Us' is also a real song that you should check out :)


End file.
